A Manifesto for AI Music Learning 

Human existence is for each of us a challenging experience. Against this backdrop, music is a universal source of joy and connection. 

Everyone has music within. If you have a heartbeat, you are a drummer. If you write, you are a composer. If you speak, you are an instrumentalist. To be human is fundamentally to be musical: embodied, emotional, expressive, and connected. This is why billions of people love music and listen to it every day. 

Over millions of years of human evolution, intrepid musicians and teachers across every tribe, culture, society and civilisation have nurtured the flame of music, enhancing and passing down musical intelligence as a person-to-person transmission. The value of this human inheritance has been proven in the present day, as study after study has shown that music learning, for those who are lucky enough to have the opportunity, has a more holistic set of benefits than perhaps any other activity. 

But learning an instrument is too hard and expensive for most, and is therefore limited to an elite few. Most learners fail, or give up, or don’t even try for fear of failure. Now, for the first time in human history, a new set of technologies, culminating in AI, have emerged that can radically democratise music learning. 

The core objective of all AI should be to enhance the humanity of humanity, any other vision for AI is a lesser vision. We can eventually delegate more and more to intelligent machines, but we must not delegate our essential being – our embodied, emotional, expressive, and connected lives. The most impactful and immediate way to enhance the humanity of humanity is to create a world where every single human being is given the resources to realise their musical potential. 

To free the music in this way, we have built Roli, your musical AI Coach. Our goal for Roli is to make music learning available to all. And while Roli will make music learning more widely accessible, AI should not be a replacement for meaningful human interaction. Learning music from other people will forever be a vital part of musical education, and by bringing more people into the music learning ecosystem, we intend to provide more opportunities for people to teach music. More music learners means more musicians, more music, and more demand for teachers and Roli will be built to be a partner and co-pilot to human teachers as well. 

Roli is being built on the following core principles.

1. Mission: Roli exists to free the music, in order to enhance the humanity of humanity.

2. Values: learning, creativity, expression, play, and fostering human connection.

3. Human-first: AI should expand human capability and experience, not replace our embodied, emotional, expressive lives.

4. Trust: Roli will be transparent about how it works and responsible in how it handles data, with privacy, consent, and safety at its core.

5. Science: Roli will help advance a new science of music learning by bringing together sound, gesture, practice, and interaction to better support learners worldwide.

6. Companionship: Roli is your musical friend, guide, companion and AI Coach, helping you work through the challenges you face on your learning journey. 

7. Radical personalisation: Roli’s practical mission is to understand your goals, tastes, and learning profile and tailor lessons and teaching to you and your needs. 

8. Teacher-friendly: Roli is committed to increasing the demand for human music teachers, not decreasing it. We deeply respect human teachers, aim to strengthen the teacher-student relationship, and will always compensate teachers fairly when they contribute to our platform.

9. Mastery: Mastery requires practice. Roli makes practice easier to begin, easier to sustain, and more fun, but only you can do the work.

10. Diversity: Roli embraces diverse musical traditions and intelligences, because music is a reflection of the multitudes of human experience. 

Now anyone can learn piano with Roli. In the near future, you will be able to learn any instrument with Roli.

Free the music!